The first thing I noticed about the Church’s church was how big it was. We weren’t in a part of Dakheng that was particularly affluent—as a matter of fact, I was pretty sure I’d passed through here with House Alzaq earlier this week when we’d been canvassing the city looking for enemies, and this area had been notable for the number of shabby, sleazy establishments taking up space.

For an area that had to be on the poorer side, the church was huge. It stood out, its spire nearly twice as tall as the buildings around it, and it was the only building in this alley that had clearly been maintained for any time. Stained glass windows remained intact while the warehouses and bars sometimes had their dusty front windows smashed to pieces, and even the coats of gold and white paint that covered the building were far newer than the jobs done for the ones next to it.

The inside was no different. The foyer could’ve been mistaken for a noble’s, though the presence of eight separate scriptures and innumerable small statues of the gods that lined the room proved that it wasn’t. No noble would be so devoted to collecting memorabilia of the deities that powered them. We were after power, after all, not any sense of religious fulfillment.

We weren’t alone. Just inside the foyer was a counter facing the door that I’d just opened. Behind it sat a receptionist, a young man who was already rising in panic as I entered. To his left and right, two guards stood, their spears in attack positions.

“In the name of the multifaith Church, you will stop,” the guards said as one. It was eerie, to hear the same line from two different people at the exact same time with nearly the same intonation.

More mental compulsion? It could be that, or it could just be a lot of training. Not worth noting right now.

These were minions. I doubted they even had oaths. If they didn’t provide serious danger to me, I wouldn’t kill them. I was tempted to do so anyway just to get through them faster, but Jasmine’s voice whispered in the back of my head, telling me that what I was trying—this whole “having morals” thing—that it was worth it. That she might appreciate me more for it.

The guards barely wore armor. Leather all the way up and down, but it wasn’t nearly enough. I dashed at the one on the left while Kyle cast a spell of some sort at the one flanking on the right. Before I could even reach my target, the one Kyle had targeted fell, knocked out by whatever esoteric effect he’d infused his sphere with this time.

I made contact with my mark a moment later. We were in an enclosed space, and even if it was on the larger end, it was still just a foyer. There were chairs and sofas scattered around the sides of the room, lessening the amount of actual usable space in the area. Add in the counter and decorations, and the room’s functional size decreased drastically.

All in all, not a good place to use a spear.

Though I’d resolved to myself and Jasmine that I wouldn’t be killing people that I didn’t need to, the guards clearly hadn’t chosen that path. I ducked under an awkward thrust of the spear that definitely would’ve run me right through if I hadn’t done anything. The spear was shimmering with energy, I noted. An Aedi oath’s creation? Had to be one of the Chosen, if it was being used by the Church.

The thrust was enough to put the guard off balance, and that was all I needed. I got in close and kicked out, pushing my leg out rather than snapping up. I hit him square in the chest, going for the spear in his hand in the same motion.

As he fell back, hitting the counter as he did, I held on with all the force I had, and sure enough he lost hold of the spear.

The spear hummed in my hands, magic just beneath the surface practically begging to be let out. I didn’t oblige. I didn’t know what effect it was, if it had some sort of safety mechanism that would make non-Church members suffer when activating it, or if it was overly lethal or anything like that. Too many uncontrollable variables to bother using it.

It was balanced surprisingly well, especially for a weapon longer than I was tall. It almost made me wonder how the guard had managed to lose his grip on that, though I guessed that could be explained by a lack of physical training.

For me, though, it was simple. I’d not trained with the spear as extensively as I had with some other weapons, but I had trained with it. The spear was near two meters long, but with its magically-provided balance, it was so easy to manipulate. I spun it over my head, ensuring that I didn’t have the sharp end pointed towards the still-stunned guard.

He caught his bearings just in time for me to slam the butt end of the spear into this chest again. This time, I heard him audibly exhale, the impact knocking the wind out of him, and he crashed into a set of statues, knocking over what I was pretty sure were depictions of Nacea and Voci intertwined with each other. They didn’t break on impact, thankfully, though I wasn’t sure if the same could be said for the guard. I didn’t see anything else that could’ve made that cracking sound, at least.

The guard was still alive, but it didn’t seem like he was going to be getting up anytime soon.

“Please don’t hurt me,” the receptionist said, his hands in the air. “I just started working here, I—“

“You’re going to tell us a few things if you know what’s good for you,” I said neutrally. “Alright?”

“Yes, I can do that,” he replied. “Please.”

“You’re going to be alright,” Kyle said. “Think of it as a test for this establishment of the Church. One which these two guards failed.”

The boy visibly paled at that, but there was also a change in his demeanor that made me think this wasn’t too far off from something that had happened before. When he spoke again, it was with a nervous confidence that said more of the same.

“Ah, examiners,” he said, not quite managing to control the shaking in his voice. “Haven’t had a visit in a long time. Not scheduled?”

“We never are,” Kyle smiled.

“Why the clown makeup?”

“Why the failure?” Kyle’s reply was immediate, and the boy shut up again.

“Look, you failed, alright?” I said, trying to play with the bit. Kyle’s knowledge of Church customs was clearly far superior to mine, since the boy had actually bought into the bullshit that he’d made up on the spot, but I had still gone to the multifaith Church’s services every now and then. I could at least go along with it. “This is simply a price for failure.”

“A price?”

“Us examiners aren’t all-knowing, you know,” Kyle said. “We sought to meet with another competent establishment that could provide us with the information we need to navigate this turmoil. Unfortunately, it seems that we will have to settle for yours.”

The boy gulped. “Okay. Information? I have some of that. On what?”

“Recent captures,” I said. “Missions from the Church.”

“I don’t—I don’t think so,” the receptionist said, reaching for something beneath the counter.

I pointed the spear’s tip at his throat, and he froze.

“I was just looking for papers,” he protested weakly. “There’s nothing here that I can use against you. I promise.”

Kyle walked around the side of the counter, coming to a stop right besides the boy. “He’s right. He must simply be trained to deal with this situation more.”

“I fully agree,” I said blandly, still focusing my attention on the tip of the spear.

“Are you sure you don’t know anything?” Kyle asked. “I’ll have you know, the god I swore an oath to does not take kindly to liars. Not at all.”

I had to admire how believably he could lie so baldly. It was a talent, and apparently being a Shanzhai oath meant that Kyle had that talent in spades.

“I swear on my life,” the boy said. “I know we were making a movement on some nobles, but—you have to understand, they don’t tell me anything! I’m just the guy at the front!”

“I understand,” Kyle said.

The boy was halfway through a relieved sigh when he passed out, Kyle’s magic taking effect in instants.

“I didn’t get the impression he was lying,” I said. “Either he’s a very talented liar, or he’s just the scared boy that he looks like.”

“I’m inclined to say the latter,” Kyle replied. “Come. There’s bound to be more people within this place. Perhaps we can discover something from one of them.”

Sure enough, I could hear shouts from further within the church.

There was going to be more fighting, wasn’t there?

After all, no location that the Church ran was complete without a few Chosen.

“We’re going to be fighting oathholders,” I said. “Chosen, most likely. They might have more.”

“Chosen?”

“You haven’t seen any of the Church’s sermons?”

“I was never one for religion.”

Huh. That kind of checked out. “In short, those are the few oathholders in the modern world who are sought out by their god, rather than the other way around. Those who are specifically found for their virtues rather than those who simply complete a checklist of rituals. You might qualify, actually.”

“Interesting,” Kyle said. “The Church believes that these are the only oathholders that deserve to hold power?”

“Basically,” I replied absentmindedly, already walking to the next room.

The Church had a lot of money and power, even if its influence was far lower than it had been in its heyday during the continental war. In this case, it meant that their single church was big as fuck. The next room over was what appeared to be this place’s primary hall of worship, but it wasn’t the only large room in the area.

Hallways split off from the chapel at regular intervals, going off to who knows where. It looked almost like a noble’s house if one ignored the rows of wooden seats and the altar with the concentric circle diagram of the gods.

The chapel itself was empty at the moment. No sermon right now and no wandering beggars looking for sustenance, it appeared. The shouting I’d heard just a moment ago had come from further away, down one of these halls. Now, which hall it was—that was an entirely different question. I counted at least seven of them, three on either side and one directly behind the altar where priests no doubt conducted their sermons from. Given the structural design of this place, we were right underneath its spire, but the roof of the hall wasn’t even that high. That meant multiple stories, which in turn meant the potential for an absolutely massive number of personnel.

Still, this was a smaller establishment. This area of town wasn’t frequently travelled, so I could reasonably believe that there weren’t more than a handful of Chosen guarding it.

Not that it mattered that much. All that we needed out of this right now was one single person who was actually in the loop. One person that we could squeeze for information.

“Lots of options,” Kyle said. “Which way do you want to head?”

“None of them,” I said. “We’re not scouring the whole place from top to bottom. There’s not nearly enough time to do that with every establishment we go to. We’re just looking for information.”

The thought did come to mind that there could be mental compulsions on the Chosen that we encountered, but I was hoping that wasn’t the case. Surely they wouldn’t handicap their own elite, right?

If it was, then we would indeed have to scour this place top to bottom and do the same for every other church we visited. A pain in the ass, and a potential waste of our search that could mean Jasmine would run out of time before we could find her. I couldn’t bear the thought of that happening.

“So you want to draw them to us?” Kyle asked. “Seems reasonable. Sounded like they were coming en masse, anyway.”

“I can accelerate the process,” I said.

I formed unstructured magic in my hands, my oath coming to me as smoothly as I could ask for. Of course you only work this well when the situation’s gone to shit.

The mass of magic formed in an instant, and I threw it at the altar. It wasn’t the best shot I’d ever done, but it was more than enough to obliterate the intricate designs there. The sound of the front part of the chapel collapsing in on itself was a lot more satisfying than it should’ve been.

Just to make a little more sound, I extracted a knife from one of my pockets and looked up. There were beautiful stained glass windows placed up high behind us, looking out onto the street, were designed to resemble the concentric circles that represented the four pantheons of gods. Normally, I would be able to appreciate the artistry that went into them, but right now all I could feel for the Church was disgust.

I enchanted the knife in an instant and threw it. The blade flew straight and true, and when it hit the glass behind us, it shattered like it was little more than sugar glass. It must’ve been reinforced enough to avoid damage from lowlifes in the area, but that meant nothing to my magic.

“That felt unnecessary,” Kyle said.

“It was,” I acknowledged. “Felt good.”

“Granted,” he replied. “Not like there’s any love lost between me and the Church.”

“Something happen with you and them?” The sounds of people were getting closer, but nobody was quite entering the chapel yet. I sat down on one of the benches, closing my eyes and drawing on my oath.

“They tried to recruit me,” Kyle replied, toying around with his own blade, making it disappear and reappear. “Now that you talk about the whole Chosen thing, that kind of makes sense. They were rather adamant with their tactics. Put me off them.”

“Mmm. I see.” I hadn’t really had any interactions with the Church besides a few sermons growing up in Syashan. I didn’t know enough about them to have a prior impression, but their involvement in this situation told me everything I needed to know about them.

“Heads up,” Kyle said, nodding towards the second hallway on our left. “Getting real loud there.”

Gods above, this was going to be an annoying fight. Not going lethal instantly was a massive pain in the ass. They were probably going to be trying to kill us, too…

Morals were such a pain.

“Got it,” I said.

I took a couple steps back into the foyer to pick up the spear that I’d used to knock down one of the guards. It wasn’t the best nonlethal weapon, but it was certainly less lethal than my magic.

My return to the chapel wasn’t a moment too soon. As I stepped back in, two people clad in thin metallic armor dashed out from the hallway Kyle had indicated.

The first of them was met with a sphere of power to the face. They fell over near instantly, retching. Not the same effect he used earlier.

The second, however, was more adept. When Kyle cast another spell at them, a shimmering shield of force popped into existence, covering the door. The now bright red sphere made contact, detonating as it hit the shield and dissipating into nothing less.

“Oathholder,” I called, a little unnecessarily.

That wasn’t a simple Ceretian shield. A little more complex, given the pattern that the oathholder was keeping up. A Dissipative Barrier, maybe? That seemed like the most likely option.

Good. I probably wasn’t going to kill them if I used my magic just this once.

They were moving now, their spell surrounding them. As they stepped forward, my suspicions were confirmed. It surrounded them on all sides, rather than only their front. Definitely not a Ceretian shield.

I dashed forward to meet them, passing unstructured magic from my hands into the spear.

The spear reacted, almost jumping out of my hands with how much it started to violently vibrate.

Right. The spear had been a magic object of its own. I wasn’t going to be able to pass my own magic in there without triggering whatever enchantment was inside.

Fine then. I could do this with another weapon. Rather than the spear, I drew yet another pair of daggers from within my armor. Silently, I thanked myself for taking the precautions to load myself to the gills with sharp things. It was kind of sad how often having frankly ridiculous amounts of blades came in handy these days, I had to say, but at least it proved that my preparation was working out.

I threw one of the daggers at the oathholder, just to check if it was one of those barriers that only blocked magical effects or something like that.

No dice. It bounced straight off. Probably a Dissipative Barrier, then.

Frame, fuel, spark. I’d been getting in a fair amount of practice today, and the magic missile came easily. Still didn’t feel quite right, but I was getting there.

It slammed into the shield and dissipated, just like Kyle’s spell had. This time, though, I could see the shimmering in the air falter for a second.

That was promising. I cast another as the oathholder turned their attention to me, pouring more fuel into it than the last one, and this one had much more of an effect. When the pure black spell made contact with the shimmering force, both of them seemed to pause in the air for a second before shattering.

Before the oathholder could react, I was on them with my knife. I didn’t want to leave this one to a gruesome death at the hands of my magic, so my slash was unguided my magic. As I got closer, I recognized that my opponent was a woman, though that was still a bit hard to tell. She had a helmet emblazoned with the symbol of the Church on her head, blocking most of her face off apart from her eyes.

Well. Nonlethal didn’t mean taking someone down without pain, and in an area where Nacea oaths should be commonplace, it meant I had a lot more leeway than I would’ve had otherwise.

I aimed for her exposed eye with the blade, lunging forward at the slit in her helmet.

She reacted instinctively, flinching back, and the knife didn’t quite make contact. That was fine. I wasn’t new to fighting.

I turned my momentum into half a roll, getting myself lower to the floor, and I swept out with my leg, catching both of hers as she tried to retreat into the safety of the hallway behind her.

My opponent fell as fast as she’d come, and I capitalized on it, rising up from my position on the ground only to tackle her and complete her fall.

She was armored all over, but that wasn’t much of an issue when the helmet wasn’t securely attached to the rest of her armor. Whoever this oathholder was, she wasn’t experienced with close quarters combat. The fall dazed her enough for me to kneel on her chest and use her own body as leverage to force the helmet off.

Ah, fuck, there wasn’t really anywhere that I could stab here to take her out nonlethally, right?

“Kyle!” I shouted. I had a moment, at least, since this woman still hadn’t quite gained her bearings yet. Just to add onto that confusion, I struck her in throat with my bare hands. Not hard enough to cause permanent damage, but certainly enough to keep her down for a bit.

Thank the gods, he’d wrapped up taking down his guy a lot earlier.

Behind me, the clown slowly made his way towards my downed woman. I wasn’t looking at him, but I could hear the sound of something heavy dragging on the ground.

“Were these the only two?” I asked. “This one looked to be a Chosen, if a new one.”

“They aren’t,” Kyle said. “There’s a least a half-dozen more, I’m fairly sure, going off the detection spell I used. They’re further out, though.”

“Great,” I sighed. “Help me keep this one out of commission, then?”

“Sure,” he said, bringing a sphere up.

This one flashed a dull green before activating, a familiar gas spilling out of the sphere.

“Alex’s gas?” I asked.

“It’s useful,” Kyle shrugged. “Not powerful enough to use in active combat, though. Come on, we need to get ready.”

I stood up as the people at our feet slowly lost the ability to move.

There were more Chosen on their way.